Lack of Privacy: How the internet and social media has breached it

As we all know, the internet has its benefits when it comes to acquiring data for certain topics, expressing yourself towards the world at large and to talk to people from across the globe, whether it would be same country but different cities, or foreign people from other parts of the world. But with this comes an aspect of the internet in which people have greatly criticized as an “inhumane” action towards one’s rights as a citizen of a country that has been stated as “free”, this issue is the breach of privacy that is apparent in the internet itself and how it has grown paranoia in people when it comes to sharing personal information such as credit card numbers for online shopping, your address for mailing companies or even just to see your hobbies and preferences by taking in reference from friends or people you follow on social media.

Monitoring your usage of the internet

Whenever we look up things on certain browsers we’ve used a lot we always seem to get options towards previous subjects we’ve looked up, unless you use incognito mode, or of certain topics that seem to be relevant towards one’s region/country. With this we can see that these browsers can store up data of past searches through simply taking a peak at your history in the device and/or of your account tied to that browser, such as how Google Chrome uses your gmail to sync up information from all the devices that have this account synced to. This is the same to social media, as normally they can use the tracked information to let you know of certain trends or even people that could share the same interests in the recommended list they tend to give out to their users.

Now, this might seem a bit harmless on paper, simply them taking in consideration your interests and such, and trying to find the ideal people for you to share a conversation with. However, the fact that the browser still takes in the information that was being searched for and even things like passwords are taken into account, it can cause some issues as it has been revealed that very popular browsers such as Google, Yahoo! and etc. store up this information and it can be used in a negative way. Such as when hackers or people inside the company in the higher ups can have access to this personal information of yours.

Along with these issues, one that is heavily present and can also create a lot of tension for these companies alongside what was already established was how it could monitor your movements, as in any, yes, any location that the internet is accessible to, that’s just freaky. One thing to also take note is that most of these browsers also take in information you you may think is long gone, such as deleted links, images that may have been downloaded and even just everything done in incognito mode, although it does make you believe otherwise. Certain apps and programs can also have access directly into your camera and microphone, where even information that you never intended to put on your phone can end up on. All in all, anything that can be put into the internet will always be there, somewhere, mainly inside the information archives of these big software companies, alongside even things that are simple as locations and links you’ve visited before; just remember to be careful with what’s shared and what isn’t over the internet, you’re always being monitored one way or another but can always try to check what got monitored or not using certain options such as the My Activity option that Google gives to let you know of any actions made inside your account and so forth.

My two most used sites and their credibility

Now then, another topic that I wish to share with this post is how you can easily monitor certain websites and see where exactly their sources come from. This can be used to see how validated certain cites are and how they can acquire the information they’re trying to share to the internet. One of these programs which I have found major success with is Disconnect.me, a handy application from the Google Chrome store that adds in an extension where you’re able to register the current website on your screen and determine what sources this cite uses to convey the information given or even where most of the information they find is originated from. From this, I will explain two of my most frequent cites and how this tool can be used by my part to see the sources and any other small additions given to the page itself from others:

–YouTube
We all know YouTube and how much it has influenced over the idea of sharing information, ideas and other things towards the internet, where many people have found many uses from perhaps a tutorial for certain activities, helping to share ideas and even to just find a nice video to feel better for one’s self. Now then, using Disconnect.me, I was able to find quite a few things that are tied to the main page of YouTube, as you will see. Of course the main branch would mainly be from Google as the company had bought YouTube during it’s early days to expanded their enterprise, along with smaller branches of Google such as the ads that comes with the YouTube service, or the simple doubleclick.net, which.. I mean, if you’re using the internet and not know about the double click thing, it’ll be quite surprising.

–Fire Emblem Wikipedia
Now then, Fire Emblem is one of my favorites Nintendo franchises out there, with now a 16 games lineup and still growing in strength, especially in recent times due to the major success of recent releases such as Fire Emblem Awakening (2012) to Fire Emblem Three Houses (2019). Now then, with that out of the way, like many other franchises, Fire Emblem has a Wikipedia site dedicated for simply information of the franchise and anything related to lore, stat lines or even just small trivia if needed be, and I use it a lot mainly to look up certain art pieces, stat lines or even to just read up on things I have still yet to understand, even after playing all 16 games in the franchise. Now then, onto the information given, we can find up to 32 other links that branch out of the main page, although some are hard to make out due to the crossed out aspect of it, the main ones seem to be wikia, which makes sense due to it be a subbranch of Wikipedia itself, although many sources are also of original Japanese sites where a lot of information of both Western and non-Western released Fire Emblem games come from, mainly from Intelligent Systems themselves.

My thoughts

Overall, one should always stay safe with the information given out to the internet, you never know if it’ll be used for the wrong reasons against you and it’s understandable to have a lot of paranoia, although.. I will say, I believe it’s not a bad practice, it’s understandable there are certain breaches that are necessary to ensure the security of people, and I do have some faith in some of these big companies that have done everything to keep their services hacker-free, although I can’t lie some do slip from time to time, but still I think it’s not that bad considering it’s a price to pay to ensure the safety of people and society as a whole, but of course there’s always a line when it comes to one’s privacy and that must be respected, so hopefully these companies believe in this respect, especially when it’s something that isn’t exactly bad. And of course do try out Disconnect.me to check out and try out this extension to help check out the sources of certain cites, what smaller aspects they use to present themselves and to prove the legitimacy of these sites when it comes to information gathering/sharing. Now, with all that out of the way, please, have a lovely day.